


comfort

by kelpie_flavored



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Animated GIFs, Coming Out, Dreams, Family Bonding, Feelings Jams, Fluff, Gen, Homophobia, Illustrations, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Makeover, Meteorstuck, Misogyny, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Dave Strider, Nonbinary Karkat Vantas, Retcon Timeline, Trans Character, Trans Dave Strider, Trans Female John Egbert, Trans Jade Harley, Trans Karkat Vantas, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24302125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelpie_flavored/pseuds/kelpie_flavored
Summary: Just some kids trying to figure out their identities at a formative period in their life.A birthday gift for Sarah <3
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Davesprite & John Egbert, John Egbert & Jade Harley
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	1. dresses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VioletMoon123](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletMoon123/gifts).



> hope you enjoy <3

“How does it feel?” Jade says.

“I…” You look at yourself in the mirror.

It feels good, really fucking good! But… wow. It’s kind of weird to actually act on something you’ve been trying to suppress so fucking long? 

“I look like a girl.”

“You sure do! Does that feel good, though?”

“Kind of…” 

“Why kind of?”

“It’s nice, but feels weird to be wearing one of your dresses? It feels like I’m borrowing an identity rather than making my own. I dunno, that sounds like a load of poetic bs Rose would describe it as.”

“Then let’s make you your own!” Jade says.

“What?”

“C’mon!” Jade drags you across the ship, through the halls of consorts. God this is so awkward. What if someone sees you like this?! You arrive at the alchemiter, where Davesprite is making piles of… something. He squawks in surprise when Jade yells out a “hi, Davesprite!” He captchalogues the piles and rushes off to unknown parts of the ship. Well at least you won’t have to deal with his questions over this stuff.

Jade presses a button on her wardrobifier panel thing and you suddenly have your godtier back on. She crosses the eclectica dress and- hey! “Where’d you get one of my t-shirts?”

She sticks her tongue out at you. “Your house, dunkass! I took everybody’s clothes in case we got bored of like, our normal outfits or godtier pajamas or whatever.” She places the stacked cards in the scanner, presses a few buttons, and a new dress appears. 

You pick it up nervously and put it on as quick as you can in the corner, hoping it doesn’t look like absolute shit on you, you try not to pay too much attention to what it looks like.

You walk back out. “How does it look?”

Jade gasps and lets out a little squeal.

“It looks so pretty! Aaa! Hang on, don’t look at yourself yet, let me just…”

She plays with your hair for a little bit, you feel really silly and probably look stupid as hell but you’re not just gonna object to it before you’ve seen what she’s done.

“Okay, _now_ you can look.” She says. She has a giddy look on her face as you walk to the closest mirror to inspect yourself.

You look in it and are greeted with…

The SLIMER DRESS!

You can’t believe you’re thinking this but you look… startlingly pretty? You don’t know what combo it is of the hair and dress but you look nice! And kind of… girlish! And that feels really good for some reason that you cannot yet explain! 

You bring your hands up to cover your mouth and you can see Jade slowly approaching you. You blink the tears out of your eyes as she gets up close to you. “So, how does it feel?” She asks.

“Nice.” Really nice. Why does it feel so right to look like this?

She smiles at you, her tail wags gently. “You know it’s okay to feel nice looking like this, right John?”

You’re… not actually sure. You don’t know how you feel about feeling like this. You like being all pretty like this. Like a girl. But… you’re not sure how you feel about that if that makes any sense. You like this. (It feels weird though. It feels like… you should be more like this. More like a girl. Like if you’re wearing this then there’s a whole lot of other girl things you should have too.) You decide to be short with your answer. You know Jade can’t read your mind but you don’t really want her catching on to your inner thoughts! 

“I guess. It’s just weird.” You pick up one side of the dress and let it fall into the poofy, ruffled mess that is the underskirt of it.

“Weird how?” Jade seems to be trying to be extra nice for some reason? She’s really gentle with her words.

You… guess you could tell her this. She is your sister after all. Hopefully she won’t make fun of you for it. You mean, she was nice about the whole ‘I want to wear a dress’ thing, so this shouldn’t be any different, right? Just some thoughts that probably everyone has.

“Weird like…” God this is hard to say. “Like this feels too right. Like this is the way I’m… supposed to be and look like all the time instead of like… a one time thing or something I’d do if I was one of those people who dress up as a girl for shows?”

“You mean drag?”

“Yeah, that. I don’t feel like a drag person, I feel like- I dunno! I feel like I was supposed to be a girl but for some reason the ectobiology machine made me not a girl? Like maybe I messed something up to make baby me a boy? I dunno, that sounds stupid.”

Jade gently rests a hand on your shoulder. “It’s okay to feel like that.”

“I dunno if it is. You don’t really understand anyway.”

“...John, I _do_ understand. I’ve been through that before.”

What? “You mean… you wanted to be a boy? How’d you get over it?”

Jade laughs. “No, not like that! I mean like, oh gosh how do I put this in a way that’s easy to understand. Agh.” She chews her lip for a second. “Okay got it. So like, when I was a little kid, I didn’t actually originally grow up as like, being a girl. I had long hair and I wore skirts, but I always thought I was just, y’know, a feminine boy. And my Grandpa didn’t really care too much so he let me do it as long as he still got to go on his hunting trips and go out to the ruins or whatever. But… I didn’t actually know I was a girl for a long, long time! I had to figure that out myself!”

“So you… grew up a boy and became a girl?”

“It’s more like I was always a girl and didn’t know it, but yeah! I had to figure it out myself and I didn’t even know I wasn’t the only one ‘til I talked to other people!”

“So you can just… be a girl if you feel like it?”

“Yeah!”

“Even me?”

“Sure! If you feel like it!”

You look in the mirror, at yourself, at your hair, at your dress. 

“Jade I think… I wanna be your sister.”

There’s a huge smile on her face as she pulls you in for a hug.

“Then you are! You wanna make more dresses?”

“Hell yes.”


	2. stickers

Karkat peels the back off another star.

“And it was hell to live in. It was hell and I hated it so I never got to even like… explore what my feelings might mean.” Dave says as Karkat sticks the star to his face, placing it among the million other star and heart stickers on his face.

“I just…” Dave lets out a little sob. “Shh, shh, shh. No, it’s okay Dave.” Karkat brushes Dave’s hair out of his face and paps his cheek. They brush the tears out of his eyes. “Do you want to put your shades back on?” Dave shakes his head. “No, no. I like… being vulnerable around you. I trust you.” He takes their hand in his own. Karkat nods.

It takes Dave a little to come down from the rising panic. “You wanna stop for today?” Dave shakes his head again. “This is nice, I like jams like this. Makes it feel… soft. Like I can be me around you.” Karkat smiles at that.

Dave takes a breath. “So I never got to… explore what my feelings might mean. Like, am I a boy?” He looks away from Karkat’s face, in the fear that they’ll say something awful like Bro did. They don’t say a word, just brush his cheek with their fingertips. “I’m not really sure. Sometimes I feel like a boy and sometimes I just feel like… something else entirely? But it didn’t really matter around Bro I guess. If I grew up a girl I don’t feel like he would’ve been any softer on me. Maybe it would’ve been worse. I don’t know if I wanted him to be more affectionate or just… stay away from me entirely. Would it have been better if he never touched me in the first place?” Dave sighs. “I just wish he’d never… fuck. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to talk about the videos.”

“That’s okay. You only have to say what you’re comfortable with in a jam. Nothing you don’t want, Dave. You’re safe here.”

“I want to tell you, I just…” Dave covers his face with his hands.

“Shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay. I know you want to, it’s just hard.”

Dave nods. He couldn’t force the words out if he tried right now. Maybe later… maybe some other day but not now.

He slowly takes his hands off his face.

“Can I touch you?”

“Mh-hm.” 

They softly pet his hair. “You want me to keep going?”

“Mh-hm.”

“Okay.” They whisper. They stick a cute smiley-face sticker to his nose. “You want glitter?”

Dave lets himself have a small smile. “Mh-hm.”

They take a brush and dab it in gray glitter. They smooth it over his face. He sneezes when it gets in his nose and giggles a little. Karkat laughs along with him. Dave likes their laugh, it’s a little raspy and they cover their mouth when they do it. He can see the smile in their eyes, though. He feels comforted. Karkat shows emotion so easily. They’re so incredibly easy to read. He never has to guess, never has to try and make sense of the little movements of their eyebrows or twitches of their mouth. They just show it. They let people know when they’re coming, they let you know how they feel, they never sneak up on him or pull a weapon on him. They’re open.

“How about lipstick?”

Dave hesitates, there’s a horrible nagging at the back of his head. It feels awful. It feels wrong and bad and terrifying.

Karkat sees him fighting himself.

“Lip gloss?”

No, no, still too much. _Still too much._

“...chapstick?”

Dave slows down his breathing. Chapstick… he can… do chapstick. It’s not noticeable. Bro Nobody would never realize.

“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to-.”

“Chapstick’s good.” He rushes out.

“Okay.”

They pick up the one they know he likes best, an apple cider one, and carefully puts it on him. They put a hand on his cheek and he softly leans into their touch.

“Alright, rub your lips together to spread it evenly.” He does as such.

Karkat picks up a paper towel and holds it up. “Press your lips together with this inbetween to get out the excess.” Dave nods and does it.

“He was never… okay with anything I ever did. It felt like anything I did was the wrong move. Try to emulate him? Wrong, I could never live up to his standards. Try to be my own person? Wrong, I could never like anything non-ironically without him detesting it or trying to get rid of it. I took a picture of the sunset with my camera once. I did my normal photo developing stuff and left it to dry in my closet. He found it and put it in the blender and shredded it in front of me. He also took what I had of my food supply in there. I mean I still had some stuff hidden in the vents, but like, I couldn’t really get to it unless I had enough strength and shit and… god. I never had enough strength. I almost starved that day, Kat. I thought I was done for. I was eight years old. Eight.” 

He takes in another breath. “I really wanted to do my best for him. Be the kind of kid he’d be proud of. Be the kid he bragged about to his friends. ...I dunno if he even had friends. If he did I never met them. Sometimes he left the house and went to god knows where. Maybe he went to like… I dunno. A fabric store or something? If that wasn’t too ‘girly’ for him. God, he hated everything feminine. You know how my hair is all curly and shit?” He pulls a lock of it and lets it bounce back. “He fucking despised it. He made me iron it and keep it as straight as possible so I didn’t seem too ‘girlish.’ He didn’t dare let me not wear my shades around him, even at night. Because my eyelashes were ‘effeminate.’ God forbid I eat a fucking hotdog. Too phallic. Even that was apparently ‘girly.’ Even though he made me-…” Dave cuts off, takes a shuddering breath and wipes his eyes. “Couldn’t be good enough.”

Karkat leans forward and softly bonks their forehead against his. “You’re enough, Dave. Your human lusus was a stupid idiot bulgechafe asshole. He never deserved to be the guardian to the best fucking person I’ve known in my life.”

Dave laughs. “Can’t be the best person you’ve met in your life.”

“But you are, dumbass.” They kiss his nose, right above the smiley sticker. They gently take their hands in his. “Now you wanna see your makeup or not?” Dave nods softly, just enough that they can see it.

Karkat picks Dave up and sets him gently down next to their full-length mirror. He takes a look at himself and smiles hard. “Thank you, Kat.”

“‘Course.” They say.


	3. dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of image heavy

Something wakes you up as you drift off to dreamland…

It’s… something outside? You can hear birds chirping… and wind chimes...

Wait. You sit up and open your eyes. Where are you?

Something here seems familiar… you just cant put your finger on it.

WAIT.

You turn your head quickly. This is your home!!! This is your normal house! 

Did you travel back in time or something? You look down at your clothes, yup, you’re still godtier. And you can still feel your hair brushing your shoulders… what happened?

You look outside and see… the little prospitian and derse guys… and also normal humans? What’s going on out there? You open your window to float out and maybe check out what’s going on, but the bright light blinds you and…

You wake up in your bed. Your bed on the ship, not your bed in your house.

You suddenly feel very alone.

But not for long.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is @kelpieinfestedwaters


End file.
